The truth about Nintendo

[Zod95]

sundin13 said:

a. So you are admitting to using a flawed metric that in essence, says absolutely nothing about anything. Good, I'm glad we are on the same page and agree that you are just making things up because its convenient. 

If an indicator is a flawed metric then I don't want to know your opinion about Statistics. However, despite Statistics to be a field where we are never 100% sure of anything, I can tell you for instance that thousands of companies use it constantly to reduce costs or enhance results. Maybe they're crazy but they do it. And maybe we should never use indicators, but I'm doing it. And, as you can see from the other reply I posted, I'm not doing it to conveniently making things up. I hope we are all on the same page about that.

 

sundin13 said:

Also, as such you are admitting that games like Mario galaxy (feature a 50 piece orchestra) are among the most "evolved" of all video game music, and certainly more evolved than licenced soundtracks.

That is not yet the numbers I've asked you. I've asked you the total number of instruments used in the entire soundtrack of each game we have been talking about. Are you able to deliver that?

 

sundin13 said:

b. Once again, I laugh at the fact that you assume that in any way, licenced soundtracks are greater (note: I didn't say superior) than original soundtracks. Original soundtracks take a large amount of effort and time and money whereas licenced soundtracks only really take money. I think by your own metrics, we can agree that original soundtracks are greater than licenced in two out of three or your categories, with the third being inconclusive without knowing specific figures which are verifiably impossible to attain.

I never said that. And that doesn't make any sense.

Moreover, you fail to understand that time, money and effort are about the same thing: resources to achieve some result. Not just that. They are substitutional resources. You can buy effort and time with money. You can buy money and effort with time. You can buy money and time with effort. Therefore, there's no point in saying that the soundtrack X demanded only 1 resource while the soundtrack Y demanded all 3. It only makes sense to talk about the amount of resources.

 

sundin13 said:

You say that Sonic Adventure used an original soundtrack, but one game franchise does not an industry standard make. Other people have already posted examples of Nintendo using vocals in their songs all the way back in the SNES era. (your snide comment about Nintendo buying an orchestra is not appreciated by the way). I would also like to add that Nintendo composed all of the music in the Super Mario Galaxy series, they didn't simply hand it off to an orchestra and tell them to write music...

Of course it doesn't. But Sonic was "only" the biggest competitor of the main Nintendo franchise. Feel free to find references about the soundtrack of other competitors of the same or different Nintendo franchises.

 

sundin13 said:

Additionally, it seems to me from the examples you posted that "vocal music" became the "industry standard" in the mid 2000s and as I have already pointed out, Nintendo implemented vocals in their music long before then and they certainly didn't follow anybody.

You are confusing 2 things:

1 - Making the first move is not the same as becoming the standard. The shift to vocal music was a long process considering not only the major gaming genres and niches but also the games' musical contents. It didn't happen instantaneously when the first dev created the first music track with some vocal parts.

2 - The first time Nintendo has implemented vocal music by means of 1 game from a subsidiary that was not even called Nintendo was not the time when most of Nintendo franchises shifted to vocal music.

 

sundin13 said:

Also, you are equating Sonic and Mario in some of your quotes and saying that they are the same type of game but I would disagree. Sonic tries to be "cool" (see: Shadow the Hedgehog) and as such implements cheezy rock soundtracks into their games while Mario games tend to be more whimsical and as such impliment a very different style of music (fun fact: Super Mario Galaxy was originally going to have a latin inspired soundtrack, however after completing 28 tracks, it was decided that it just didn't fit the feel of the game. As such, the music was changed to orchestral compositions). You said that you fail to see why Nintendo didn't follow in SEGA's footsteps with the mario games and I think that is pretty clear by the reception the soundtracks from mario games tend to receive (IGN gave Mario Galaxy a Perfect 10 in Audio).

Each game is unique and thus ultimately we couldn't compare any game with any other. Fortunately, they are categorized in genres. Mario and Sonic belong to the same genre. But the thing is that Mario attempts to be simple, traditional, clinged to the old formula whereas Sonic has significantly evolved along the time, changing its environments and becoming more complex. Having that said, the standards used by the critic to evaluate Nintendo games are different from the ones used with most of the games from other publishers, not only because (fairly on unfairly) simplicity is not considered an issue but also because Nintendo games sell many millions and web sites cannot afford to be unpopular (the OP elaborates on this).

Nevertheless, I find your info very interesting. Those 28 tracks were all vocal?

 

sundin13 said:

Finally, Wind Waker uses a choir in many of the songs on its soundtrack while F-Zero uses lyrics for the character introductions (and possibly more, I don't remember)...

Meh...